jhericurl21

I get bout 275 to 300 biweekly(still in highschool) and every direct payment it automaticly puts 75 into my savings account and the rest into checking. Sadly while I have limited access to my Savings, i still withdrawal it all alot

numist

I make $350 biweekly as a college student, and ALL of my money goes to rent, bills, and school, and then loans cover what I havent got the cash for.

Save your money while you can, you'll need it.

What are you spending it on anyways?

jhericurl21

clothes
lunch(10$ a day)
goin out on weekends(liqs,taxi rides,chronic, food,movies etc)

jwells777

Unfortunately, I find it very difficult to save any money while going to college. During this period, I figure that if I can break even without taking on additional debt I'm doing well enough.

The downside is that since this is my eighth year of college...I am really missing out on the compound interest thing. I figure it is a decent gamble though as my degrees should allow me to pursue career options that hopefully offer a better quality of life.

forseti-6

After rent, gas, tolls, car payment, food, parking, gym, cell phone and internet fees, I have about $100 left to spend. I *try* to save money, but it never happens.

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Mr.Deflok

I earn about $400 a week, I put $250 away into Savings and give $50 to my parents, the rest disappears in material possesions and food.

bermuDa

not NEARLY enough :\ course i don't have a real job, so i have uh, a bad excuse.

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present_future

jeez, how much food is that?
It seems like an awful lot for lunch.

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aintyoboyfriend

In DC you can't get a decent meal for less than $10, other than Chipotle.

Mr.Deflok

We're not all from America.

lurkette

I put away about $200 into emergency savings every month, plus $200 more into a mutual fund for an eventual trip to Australia, plus 12% of my paycheck into retirement savings.

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Charlatan

I put $150/month in an RRSP and another $100 or so into my emergency fund.

I was putting upto $1000/month into savings until my wife started back at school.

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kulrblind

lurkette, you are the queen of fiscal responsibility.

hu-man

I put roughly $350 into my 'future apartment'-fund every month. Sad thing is, some of those money has to cover my skiing vacation. Okay, that's not so sad. I'm going skiing, nonetheless. But I too often dip into that fund when I'm low on cash... and I almost never think to then put even more in, next month.
Well, at least I'm saving up.

Rodney

Little or nothing, but then I'm out of work and back in school, and the wife's job is at least paying our expenses. And though we've got savings and a paid-off house, we still worry about the future -- like, when we're older and nobody wants to hire us for a job that has good health insurance. Actually, that's a concern right now for my wife, although the field I want to go into routinely offers health insurance (not very good insurance, though).

Honestly, I admire those of you who are saving for starting now. The average american household puts a big 2 percent of income into savings -- that's down from 8 percent 20 years ago, and even then we thought that was low -- the Japanese were saving 20-25 percent in those days. Too many people are too much in debt these days. Here's a scary article:

http://www.dailypress.com/business/l...ess-localheads

Jim Kata

My father always told me to save at least 10% of my paycheck from the day I started working. My neighbour is a financial advisor and he said the same thing...considering that is his job, I would like to pretend that I take their advice and save that 10%. Instead I blow it on booze or other useless stuff.

Minx

You can actually save money??

Who knew?!


Edit...Okay I'm not as irresponsible as all that! But, it seems every spare penny I have goes to my kids in the form of clothes, sports, etc. I try to save some in a daily interest account but it always seem to get sucked out to pay bills!
One day......

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rockzilla

Right now all my extra money is being frantically thrown at a loan I took out last year. I figure I'm about 5 months away from killing it off, and once that's done, all the money I was putting on the loan will go into savings. I get $20/cheque automatically transferred from my chequing to my savings account every payday though, it's not much, but it builds up. It also takes a week for me to transfer the money back out, so if I want it, I'd better have a really good reason.
I get 5% of my paycheque put into an RRSP, which my employer matches, once again, it's not a lot, but I've still got about 40 more years in the workforce.

Cynthetiq

i try to follow the 70-20-10 rule

70% to day to day expenses
20% to going out to dinner and other "niceties"
10% to savings...

that's my rule.. but the reality is that the wife puts away a good amount of monies into various accounts for various things. In just a few years we've created a substantial nest egg.

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Dano069

Zippo. Nada. Nothing. Zero.

Like the government, I'm running a deficit spending agenda. Not by choice, mind you. The auto repair portion of my life came quite by surprise. Waiting for the tax return to make it to my house. Sigh.

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gilada

Hell, I'm way outta school, and married, and we still don't save any money, none to save at the end of the month.

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jhericurl21

food in edmonton is around 6, plus another 2 for the drink, and by then the change is gone, well atleast decent food

Mr.Deflok

You just gave me such a brilliant idea, put even more money on in a seperate savings account for a trip to Japan, I love you! Thanks so much!!!

Randerolf

I have an emergency fund for about 6 months of expenses, a budgett for stuff, and have recently been putting 25% of my pay in savings.

I'm putting myself through school. 'Nuff said. (Tighten up Randerolf!)

mr_mcrafe

I'm not exactly sure how much I save, maybe NZ$100 a month (student with part time graphic design job), but I tend to think about what I can buy if I keep saving. That way I don't blow it on rubbish. At the moment I'm saving for either a kitesurfing gear package, or a car upgrade which is less likely.

Ripsaw

20% of my salary before taxes goes straight into my 401k

Of the remainder, I put as much as possible towards the future projects and responsibilities.

-Wedding
-Honeymoon
-Computer Projects
-MA Training
-Trip to Japan.
-College fund for my niece and for my not even thought about children.

All things aside, I've learned that it really isn't worth it to make yourself miserable in the now, so that you can save up for that really cool thing later. You may just get hit by a truck.

Live your life.

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lurkette

Hey, happy to help! We have it auto-deducted so we don't even have to think about it, and it goes into a mutual fund instead of a bank account so it'd be harder to raid.

Bon voyage!

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erion

I put 6% pre-tax into my 401k, and $100 a week into a miscellaneous expense account to be freely spent on non-essentials.

My wife gets $25 / week put into a savings account for our son and $100 / week into a savings account for us. I believe she's doing 6% pre-tax into her 401k as well. Everything else is paying our monthly bills and paying off our college and car loans as quickly as we can so we can start sinking more money into saving to buy a house.

Yes, Direct Deposit makes the saving easier, especially since the savings accounts are not linked to the ATM cards.

neddy65

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Minx
[B] You can actually save money??

Who knew?!


That's exactly what my wife and I were thinking!
quite seriously, after mortgage,car,personal loan,insurance,and credit card payments, along with food,power, cable, phone, and stuff for the chirruns what the hell is left to save?
Oh yeah, I gots to have money for my Tim Horton's jones!

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aintyoboyfriend

I am young, but ever since I started my 401K I put 15% of my checks there.

I also *try* to save a little every month, but that doesn't happen too often.

One of my new years resolutions was to save at least 10% of every check. Guess we will see in a few days when I get paid.

Apex Shok

Just ballin' on a budget.

But really, I can't save anything right now. The Wife and I are trying to work it out so she can stay home with the kid. So far so good. Been doing it for 3 years.

Living on one income is tough. But at least my child is not in daycare 8-10 hours a day.

tinfoil

I put anywhere between 20% and 50% of my pay away into RRSPs and mutual funds every month. The funds will help to buy a house this year, hopefully with a good 25% down payment atleast.

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Cycler

Saving!? What is this you speak of?<p> Going to start sometime, or I am going to just work till I die. Either way...<p>I am going to look into the auto deduct thing maybe if I don't see it I can't spend it.

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redneckdude

The wife and I, while we both make a good income have been very financially irresponsible. As a result we have gotten ourselves in a pretty good pickle .

I'm not sure what we are going to do in the shorterm, but once we get out of this dilemma I can asure you there will be a savings plan put into place.
Scoty

synic213

Before our son came along, my wife and I had saved up about 12K. Now she's a stay at home mom and money is tight; we're dipping into savings instead of putting money in. I still put 5% of my income into my 403B plan (educations version of a 401K).

Like Apex said, it's tough being the sole provider for a family. That being said, I'll take the love and support of my family over the material things any day.

ForgottenKnight

I save every penny. I work all summer, save everything, spend extremely little on myself. Then during the school year it goes to my rent and expenses. Then I let the United States government's financial aid department take care of that bill from the school. I work during the school year as well in order to pay for everything, and save a bit. So long term savings are out of the question until after college. But short term savings is me not spending money on myself or things that I need as to have enough money left at the end of the school year to keep my apartment for this next summer.

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digme

right now, I'm just trying to go into less debt. My girlfriend thinks that money in the bank is money thats not doing anything, and her spending habits are rubbing off on me. Not good.

thingstodo

You can get a decent, healthy meal anywhere in the US for $5 or less. Wendy's grilled chicken and a bowl of chili is nutritional and high fiber, while low in fat and costs about $4.25.

A good rule of thumb is to build up enough saving to cover you for at least two months. I built up six months of FU money.

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hu-man

Actually, I just realised that I converted the currency wrong. It's more like $650-$700 I save up every month. My bad.

username

When I worked in high school 50% of what I made went into an account for college expenses and 50% went to me to spend. This worked out well cause it allowed me to not work for a few years while at college. However, as soon as I got an apartment I had to work again to pay for all the bills you can ignore when you live in the dorms.

Now I am in a PhD program having to pay my way (hopefully not much longer) and all I can say is save a lot of money cause you never know when the school is gonna raise tuition or something bad like your car dying is going to happen. I had both happen and it really put a strain on me, but at least having the money saved up helped the burden of buying a new car and paying the tuition.

I now try to put 20% into savings and use the rest on bills, etc. Plus living cheap such as not eating out near as much as I used to and not going to movies has really helped.